Levi McClemont

Levi McClemont (22 April 1823-4 October 1889) was a US Democratic Party politician from Louisiana, serving in the State House of Representatives from 1861 to 1865 and from 1870 to 1876.

Biography
Levi McClemont was born on 22 April 1823 in Rapides Parish, Louisiana to a family of Southern Baptist southerners. McClemont became a lawyer, passing the bar and becoming a law professor at Louisiana State University after it opened in 1853. McClemont was elected Judge of Louisiana's Fourth Circuit Court in 1857, and he administered justice from 1857 to 1861. That year, he entered the Louisiana House of Representatives as a member of the US Democratic Party. McClemont voted against the participation of African-American troops in the American Civil War as Confederate States Army soldiers in 1862, and he proposed harsh penalties against captured black US Army soldiers during the war. McClemont was removed from office after the US Republican Party began Reconstruction in the American South, only to be re-elected in 1870. McClemont served in the State House of Representatives from 1870 to 1876 as a Southern Democrat, opposing Republican policies during Reconstruction. McClemont retired from politics to 1876 to return to his legal career, and he died in 1889.